So, a good deal arose at a good time and we are shifting this blog from wordpress-blog-hosted to self-hosted … hooray! Right now, you shouldn’t notice too many changes except of course in the very important web address. Our new site lives at:

So, this week I will endeavor to remind everyone many times to change your bookmarks and feeds to the new site and all posts after this one next week will be on both sites, and then after that, we’ll stop using this site and switch exclusively to the new one. I don’t yet know about e-mail subscriptions, but I will look into that. UPDATE: Email subscriptions now exist on the new site!

Of the changes you might see, it does cost monies to host, so we will try to find some ways to make that money back, but I promise to be careful and Dawn is crazy about design and layout, so she won’t let any ads detract from our appearance. We’re still learning the process though, so this will be fun and exciting and new!

When bringing up the next generation of geek, it’s important to start them young, and I’m not sure you can get much younger than these adorable onesies! What? You don’t have kids? Well, I’m sure you know someone who does, go corrupt theirs!

I have been recently thinking about the books I read as a young ‘un, as a number of them have reappeared recently in various places on my radar. I realized that I read a lot of what would be considered geeky books, although it does make me wonder if the books influenced my geekiness or if my geekiness influenced my reading choices. Either way, I made this list of my Top Ten favorite books that I read before high school that were definitely related to my geekish ways.

We’re starting a little something new here on the blog, which is to highlight new games, including some that aren’t quite out yet. Game players tend to be creative sorts, and some are creative enough to not only improve the games they have, but to try and create whole new games. So, when we run across someone who has written or created a new game that sounds great, we’ll let you know about it so you can bookmark it as a future timewaster!

I’ve been working in the past two days on a lecture about DNA transcription. For those who don’t remember their basic biology, transcription is part of the process of getting from the genetic code in DNA to functional proteins in your body. How much do you remember about the genetic code? I will remind you of this much, there are quite a few numbers involved!

One of the things that can be hard to come by for a geeky girl is really nice, good quality, metal geek oriented jewelry. I love a pretty silver necklace, bonus points if that necklace of is of a favorite 9-bit video game character. Fortunately, now, with the Sketchy Stories Etsy shop, that’s absolutely possible.

I design, cast, and repair all forms of jewelry, but especially enjoy expanding my pixelated line of jewelry.

Who are you and/or how did you get started?

My name is Nicholas D’Amario and I got my start in jewelry through my Father who I apprenticed for. Before jewelry, I worked as a digital artist and learned many skills that I still use today in the creation of my pieces.

What makes your items great for geeks?

For those of us who grew up in the 8-bit era of gaming, these works spark memories from pixelated days of glory. They go further than nostalgia, though, for the digital nature of these pieces creates a striking and modern appearance for any to enjoy.

What do you geek out about

Video games are my passion in both work and hobby. The lower the resolution, the better!

So, there you have some of the prettiest 8-bit jewelry I think I’ve ever seen. Enjoy!

Way back in January, GeekMom posted about a site called Frosting for the Cause. The idea behind Frosting for the Cause was that every day in 2011, bakers and bloggers would create a baked good and give a tutorial about making it to raise awareness for cancer research, especially for cancers specific to women. It’s not just about raising awareness either, it’s about giving both our time and treasure to help those with cancer. Each blogger not only provides an inspired recipe, but also donates their baked goods to those dealing with cancer and donates $25 to cancer research.

I’m a piano player. Like many children, my mother started me on the piano when I was seven. However, unlike many children (Dawn and Gardella included), for me it stuck. Being the type of person and geek that I am though, I couldn’t just be a normal, classically trained piano player. No. I quit classical music around age 14 and started getting interested in blues, jazz, and rock piano. Fortunately, I had the best piano teacher ever who let me try all these interesting things (and if you live in Central Jersey and need a teacher, let me give you his name!). In that time, I became really excited by rock and roll pianists such as Billy Joel, and pieces like Jethro Tull’s Locomotive Breath and Marc Coen’s Walking in Memphis.

It was about then that a song caught my attention with a beautiful piano part as the main melody line, although the lyrics were a bit depressing, but I was teenager so I don’t think I noticed! That song was Brick by Ben Folds Five and with help of my abilities to find and translate guitar tabs from the internet, I was soon able to play Brick myself. Then I hunted down the rest of the album Whatever and Ever, Amen and it was incredible! Then I saw Ben Folds himself on whatever music station I was currently watching, and there was this little, scrawny guy with glasses. Ben Folds was totally a nerd! A music nerd for that matter. That’s about the time I fell in love.

I decided to go hunting for geekiness on Flickr this week. I found some! Want to see:Last weekend while I was in Boston watching John McCrea rock out Sheep Go to Heaven, just down the road others were enjoying Anime Boston. Awrose snapped this nice Angry Birds cosplay.

More geekiness below the jump!

This past weekend, anime was connected by I-90 because Sakura Con was going on in Seattle at the same time as Anime Boston. I’m amused by that. Bade-md got this interesting shot.

North of Sakura Con, in Victoria, BC there was a concert of Video Games Live (which needs to come to Boston so I can see it!) and eternalsummertime got a Nintendo DS signed by the awesome folks involved!

Jumping back to the East Coast, here’s a nice picture of the New York City apple store by Ben Gillin. So many geeks, so few iPads.

Finally, my last photo comes from across the pond by psd. Gotta give the Brits credit, I want to know what they mean! Trip to England anyone?

I had bookmarked this a while back, but hadn’t really played with it. This is a visual method of multiplication using lines and intersections.

Cool, right! I love different thoughts about how to do math. Can you see how this one works? The lines crossing are basic multiplication, and then the design stacks the appropriate columns for tens, hundreds, etc. With very small numbers (4 or less) I can see how this might be easier, especially for people who do better with visuals then numbers, or perhaps someone like me who would prefer to count dots than remember multiplication tables. I never did learn most of those because I could do the math just as fast in my head. However, with large numbers it becomes tedious with too many points (which you might as well just multiply!).

Of course, thinking about multiplication this way, you could always just break numbers into their component parts for multiplying and it’s almost the same thing, right? For example, if I’m multiplying 4 by 52 (like, how many days a year I run approximately) I would multiply 4 by 50 and get 200 and then multiply 4 by 2 which is 8 and add them for 208. Same concept, but mental instead of visual.

Have you got any sneaky mental or visual tricks for complex multiplication?